Baylor College Medical School

51 2a Abolishing Apartheid from "Progress Through Separate Development" and From "We Blacks" by Stephen Biko

51 2. I will type both articles to you.

Abolishing Apartheid From "Progress Through Separate Development"

It is paramount importance to know that the real issues in South Africa are the existence of different nations and different nationalisms, confused coincidentally with race and color. The objectives of the policy are not old-styled segregation or white supremacy but separate freedoms and territorial separation. It is not based on notions of racial inferiority and superiority; it merely accepts and respects the fact that peoples and nations are different...

...(T) here are in South Africa not one, but a number of Bantu nations each occupying its own territory and distinguished one from the other by language differences and general cultural characteristics.........

There had also grown up in the white homeland of South Africa a white South Africian nation....They are no longer settlers, they are a nation with a language, with a South African culture...(T)hey have a distinct identity of their own as a nation... Each Bantu nation similarly has its own distinct identity and way of life....which they too wish to preserve....

South Africans find it difficult to understand why either the black man or the white man in South Africa should be urged to rerject his own identity in favor of another...

From "We Blacks" by Stephen Biko

I have lived all my conscious life in the framework of institutionalised separate development (apartheid). My friendships, my love, my education, my thinking and every other facet of my life have been carved and shaped within the context of separate development. In stages during my life I have managed to outgrow some of the things the system taught me....

Apartheid--both petty and grand--is obviously evil. Nothing can justify the arrogant assumption that a clique of foreigners has gant assumption that a clique of foreigners has the right to decide on the lives of a majority. Hence even carried out faithfully and fairly the policy of apartheid would merit condemnation and vigorous opposition from the indigenous peoples as well as those who see the problem in its correct perspective. The fact that apartheid has been tied up with white supremacy, capitalist exploitation, and deliberate oppression makes the problem much more complex. Material want is bad enough, but coupled with spiritual poverty it kills...

It is probably necessary at this stage to warn all and sundry about the limits of endurance of the human mind. This is particularly necessary in the case of the African people. Ground for a revolution is always fertile in the presence of absolute destitution.

question

2. What is the experience of apartheid according to Stephen Biko?

Asked by
greta r #218157
on 11/24/2013 11:07 PM

Last updated by
Aslan
on 11/24/2013 11:12 PM

Answers
1

The fact that apartheid has been tied up with white supremacy, capitalist exploitation, and deliberate oppression makes the problem much more complex. Material want is bad enough, but coupled with spiritual poverty it kills...